


Just Might Make Me Believe

by Eden Marie Dawson (GodDamnedPlums)



Series: Domestic Destiel [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 20:57:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8939011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodDamnedPlums/pseuds/Eden%20Marie%20Dawson
Summary: A college-centric AU where in Dean finds faith in the arms of a man that society deemed too broken to mend, and Castiel learns that focusing solely on only one chapter of the book prevents you from enjoying the rest of the story.





	

  
[ ](https://imageshack.com/i/pnZwRqG2j)   


Dean was never a fan of repitition, if he was being honest with himself. One would think that with the way that he and his little brother were forced to grow up, being drug around from town to town, living out of suitcases and only staying in one place long enough to get the sheets warm on their latest, yet just as crappy, motel beds, that a little stability and repitition would be a welcome sight. Well, in truth, Dean had become very cynical of just about everything that could've been considered 'normal'. Much like his father, he had learned to harden his heart to the rest of the world, with the only exception being his baby brother, Sam, who really wasn't such a baby anymore now that he stopped to think about it. He tried not to do that too often; thinking things over just made him long for the way that things could have been, should have been, if that arsonist hadn't picked the wrong house and ruined his life by taking away their mother's own. Of course, he didn't suppose any house would've been the 'right' house, had someone gotten hurt, but hey... everyone has thoughts like that at some point, right?

The reason that Dean hated repitition and routine was because he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It had never failed; he and Sammy would get comfortable in one place, Dean might find a girl that he could actually see spending more than a makeout session with, and Sam would start to open up and finally make a new friend, and their father would snatch them away again, just like that. John Winchester had never been a stable man, not since returning from the war, but he had dropped off the deep end when his wife had died. The flames had engulfed the house so quickly that John had only been able to get Dean and Sam out to safety. Sometimes, when he was only about eight or nine, he'd catch John looking at him with this far off look in his eye and he'd wonder if it was because he looked like his mother. As he grew older, he came to the painful realization that no matter how good of a son that he was, no matter how much of a soldier he acted like, and how well he protected Sammy, his father would always look at him and see the memory of the night that he had lost his best friend. He may have been dragging them everywhere with him, hunting down the arsonist that had turned his world upside down as easily as if it had been an hour glass, but Dean knew that the man he once called Dad was long, long gone.

Dean knew it wouldn't last. With each night that he had to lug his father up onto the bed and forcefully fight him out of his clothes after he had passed out, Dean felt the lead weight sinking further into the pit of his stomach. One stormy evening in late September, John Winchester gave up the fight, losing his life to the press of a liqour bottle against his temple. Dean had tried to protect Sam from the scene, trying still to fufill his big brother duties and be the good little soldier that he'd always hoped he could be for their father, but Sam had both shocked him, and chipped away at his already hardening heart when he looked him straight in the eye and mumbled the words "good, I hope he burns in hell" before running off to the woman who was to take them in. A long time friend, Ellen Harvelle and her daughter Jo had agreed to take the boys in. Dean would be turning eighteen in just a few months, but Sam, Sam was only fourteen. He needed a stable living enviorment, and Dean knew he wouldn't be able to give him that on whatever meager savings he managed to get hustling pool while he waited for their father to finish his drunken bender. He had made a personal vow that he would never abandon Sam, and so he swallowed down the pain, shoved away his pride, and trudged on forward into the open arms of their family friend and the new life that they had been propelled into.

That was near seven years ago. Sammy was all grown up and attending college at Stanford---and mind you, while Dean missed him dearly, he had never been more proud of his little brother, he himself had taken on a job tending bar at Ellen's bar called the Roadhouse. The pay was good, mainly because Ellen refused to give him any less than what she thought he deserved, plus he made a decent amount of tips, but it wasn't.....enough. During his high school years, all of his teachers assumed that Dean was stupid because he never came to class with his books, never turned in any assignments, and just generally had a bad attitude about the whole idea of school. It wasn't true; well, not all of it. He did have a bad attitude, but it didn't have anything to do with the curriculum. Dean just didn't see a point in trying if he was going to be whisked away before he could even finish the semester out. Dean was, in fact, rather intelligent and had surprised Ash and Jo on more than one occassion when he beat them both at a game of Trivial Pursuit, even after getting a couple beers in his system. He stayed away from the harder stuff, vowing silently to never walk down the same gravel path that had taken the rest of John's sanity and wilted it away. He was wiping down the final edge of the bar, working a stubborn white ring out of the shiney countertop's surface when the sound of something heavy smacking against the smooth surface behind him made him jump nearly out of his skin.

"Jesus, Winchester, you're more nervous than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs." His best friend and fellow geek-buddy, Charlie, flashed a wide, white-toothed grin at him. Dean made a dramatic show of laying the back of his hand over his forehead, the other clutching both the dust rag and his chest.

"You wound me, Bradbury! One of these days you're gonna be the death of me." He shook the rag at her, delighting in the way the corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled. 

"And what a sweet death it would be. We all know that all guys want to go out with a lesbian."

"Yes, go out with them, as in eventually convince them to have sex with them. Not go out in a blaze of glory BECAUSE of them." He shook his head with a deep chuckle rumbling in his chest. Charlie waved her hand at him. 

"Tomato, tomahto. Now! I went by the library and---"

"Charlie...." Dean groaned, letting his head fall back. His groan of agitation did nothing to deter her, however.

"---I got you some of the study materials for the SAT. Now I know you have your GED, and that's good enough but---"

"Charlie, this really isn't necessary...." He tried again, but of course, it was useless trying to talk to her when she was on one of her rants.

"---colleges really look at SAT scores, or so I've been told." She paused to take a breath and turned the biggest, widest, most adorable puppy-eyes on him that she could manage. Dean made a mental image to kick Sam's ass for teaching her how to do that. "Pleeeease, Dean? For me?"

She just had to go and pull that one, didn't she? Dean and Charlie had become friends when he had been coming home--still such a foreign concept to him, even seven years later--with the grocery order that Ellen had called in when he'd seen the petite redhead being shoved around by what looked to be a rather bulky group of assholes. It wasn't in Dean's blood to let shit like that go down in his line of vision, so he carefully dropped the paper shopping bags to the grass--he was not going back for a second trip because he fucked up and broke the eggs--and laid out the first asshole that he'd come to when he rushed to the redhead's aid.

Upon closer inspection, Dean was pleasantly shocked (and a little impressed) that said redhead was actually holding her own fairly well. She'd bloodied the nose of one of the four, and was currently wailing on another when Dean kicked the third bumbling bafoon to the concrete. He wound one arm around her thin waist and hauled her easily off of the man who had been desperately trying to shield his face. He'd been too preoccupied with watching four men, each twice the girl's size, run off with their tails between their legs, to catch much of what the girl was saying. He did catch the tail end of "let me at'em, let me at'em" and with a deep, rumbling laugh he set her back on her feet. They shared a laugh and introductions, a few beers at the roadhouse after Dean got the groceries put away, and soon, they found an unlikely frienship had formed between them. Since then, Dean would do anything for her, and Charlie damned well knew it, too.

"Fine, Charlie. For you, I'll take the damn tests. If anything just to get you off my back about it." He tossed the dust rag into the wash bucket and reached for the smallest book which was balanced on top of the other books in a perfect pyramid. Sometimes Dean wondered if Charlie had missed her calling as an architect or something, but she seemed perfectly content running the comic book store just down the road from the bar. People from as far as four towns over had been known to come in to Bradbury's Imaginarium just for the sheer authentic feeling that it portrayed. He couldn't help but smile, a mirror of Charlie's own, as he cracked open the first book and began to skim through it.

\------------------------

Three days. Charlie had given him three days to get ready for the fucking SATs because she had scheduled him with the only open date left before the new semester started. She had conviniently failed to mention that until after they had spent most of the night drinking with their buddies, and as nonchalantly as she could, offered a "Oh hey, your test is in three days! Better study!" before sauntering out the door, head laid back as she cackled. He'd have throttled her if he could've forced his legs to move the right way. Every time he took a step he ended up loooking like he was doing some kind of redneck barn dance, mixed with that weird little leg shake that you do when your leg goes to sleep and you're trying desperately to wake it up. 

So, three days, about twenty cans of Red Bull and a total of six hours of sleep later, Dean was sitting, cramped really, in one of those too-small wooden desk-chair combos that they put in the community college library when the elementary school upgraded to larger desks. He gnawed nervously on the end of his pencil; tests were never his forte. Sure, he was smart, but memorizing that much information in that short of time was certain to have fried at least some part of his brain. The excess of caffeine in his bloodstream probably wasn't helping matters either. He tapped the end of his chewed up pencil on the side of his desk, apparently his nerves getting the better of him, for soon the sound of wood splintering echoed in the otherwise silent room. Great, he'd snapped his only pencil. Maybe he could ask someone else that was here taking the test....no, it looked like he was the only one scheduled. But that couldn't be right, could it? That was just....that was awkward. He shifted in his seat, looking around for any sign of a writing utensil he could swipe, just for the time being, so he didn't have to make up some outlandish lie just to sneak out an avoid further embarassment.

He was just about to get up and search the professor's desk when a shadow cast down over his own desk. He lifted his head, following the curves of well-toned muscular thighs, just barely encased in a worn pair of blue jeans, up across the small pooch of a belly that on most Dean would've found as a sign of needing to go to the gym, but on this adonis, whomever he was, it seemed to be adding to his "oh my damn" factor, and finally, he let his gaze fall upon the most intense oceanic blue eyes that he had ever seen. The hues were such a crystal clear color that Dean was almost certain that his eyes had been carved from straight sapphires. The man's lips were twitched up, a slight smirk formed at the edges where the faint scruff connected, the obvious result of a few days past needing a good shave. Dean could practically feel the moisture evaporating right off his tongue.

"Be more careful, Mister Winchester," the man's gruff voice was enough to send a series of intense shivers coursing down his spine and right down to where his denim was quickly becoming far too constricting. "After all," he placed a new, sharpened pencil onto the desk between them. "I may not be around to save you next time."

Dean was torn between asking this guy who the hell he thought he was, and struggling to find the air to even breathe again. He picked up his new pencil, twirling it around between nimble fingers as the same man laid down a thick packet of paper in front of him, revealing that he was, in fact, the professor that would be giving him the exam. Dean felt his face tinging red all the way to the tips of his ears. "You may begin."

He was so fucked.


End file.
